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Monday, January 5, 2015

I went a full year without posting anything on this blog. I could have went another year, maybe a decade, or maybe I could have just shut down the whole operation. But here I am, posting, and being meta about myself posting on a blog.

My first New Year's resolution was to limit the amount of hashtags used on my Instagram account. My second resolution, which I only thought of hours ago, is to blog right here on calendar days with numbers ending with 5 and 0. Since it's January the 5th, here I am.

In the past, I did not have any sort of focus to this blog. I would do a quasi-(un)educated, and mostly tongue-in-cheek -- but not very humorous, in hindsight -- rant about politics, especially around 2007 and 2008. Then this blog became a unsuccessful attempt at being a webcomic around 2009 or so. Then I slowly but surely lost interest in posting whatever was on my mind. It became a monthly exercise in pointlessness, until I stopped writing on this blog for 2014.

In all likelihood, I'm still not going to have a focus for this blog. It's DeRamos.org, not something focused like Chord du Jour or any of the single-topic websites I've managed over the years. It's still probably going to be a mix of bad writing, bad advice, and bad information, with a hint of sarcasm -- which will never translate well over text. Will any of this go viral? Probably not. This blog has no target audience. Whatever I write here probably will neither appeal to nor disgust anyone enough to gather a wide audience, if any.

I will, however, title my posts with wannabe click-baiting headlines, in the hope that someone will ... click. And maybe read.

I'm going to type out a quick example of what I hope to write about, and how I will try to get a message across with this blog. Today, one of the "trending topics" on Facebook was X celebrity and his/her opinion(s) about Y topic, causing controversy among Z people. It's pretty much like that every day. Today, it was pop star (he's a pop star now, right?) Kid Rock listing various opinions as part of his marketing strategy for his latest album, causing controversy among really no one, other than wired-up people with WiFi. His opinions were pretty basic, and I probably share some of them, but for the sake of doing a writing exercise, I'll try to parse one quote from the article:

Rap-rock was what people wanted at the time, and they
still love those songs at shows. But it turned into a lot of bullshit
and it turned out to be pretty gay… If someone says you can’t say “gay”
like that you tell them to go fuck themselves. You’re not going to get
anything politically correct out of me.

1. "At the time" refers to the late '90s, and perhaps the turn of the millennium. I was never really into rap-rock at the time. I liked "American Bad Ass" because he sampled Metallica, and it was Biker Undertaker's wrestling entrance music for a time.

2. "Gay," used as an adjective to denote inferior quality, probably. (I'll blog about slurs in the future.) Kid Rock has every right to speak/write like a teenager in the '90s who doesn't know any better. (Full disclosure: I was once a teenager in the '90s who didn't know any better. Do I know any better now? Who knows?) People who do not approve of his use of language have every right to be angry and should express their anger with their own use of words. People who support his use of language have every right to be supportive and continue to speak/write like the target audience of Kid Rock's rap-rock.

3. In my opinion, political correctness and political incorrectness are simply euphemisms for preaching to one's choir:

"I know this is politically incorrect, but [inserts rather antiquated musings that seem out of place for the current day and age] ... " and the target audience applauds.

"I think we should be more sensitive to [inserts somewhat awkward, euphemistic neologisms] ... " and the target audience applauds. (I know that's probably a strawman for political correctness, but I'm trying to make a point here. I'm also using my own skewed definition for political correctness; too many definitions for too many words will be another blog topic.)

Who even gets persuaded by any of this? Children, perhaps? Their own children, and no one else?

Language usage, and the definitions of various words, will inevitably change over time. That's a given. In the meanwhile, I'd rather attempt politeness and kindness instead of overtly explosive language by the politically incorrect crowd, as well as the unhelpfully vague euphemisms employed by the politically correct crowd.

That's what I'll try to write about in this blog (for the time being). I don't know if any of this makes sense, other than to me, or is helpful in any way to anyone reading in cyberspace. In any case, I'll try to add a pretty picture (or an ugly selfie) for every post. I'll see you all on the 10th!